Let’s encrypt ejabberd

Back in May we announced that 2 ejabberd projects will participate in this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC) through the BEAM Community. The summer has ended and now it’s time to see the results!

Today we will look at the first ejabberd project, aimed at implementing ejabberd support for “Let’s Encrypt” ACME protocol. It is developed by Konstantinos Kallas, with ProcessOne’s Evgeny Khramtsov as the mentor. In the days when encryption should be widespread, it certainly would be convenient to be able to create certificates for ejabberd quickly, easily and for free.

The outcome of this project was quite successful. The pull request in question is available on GitHub. “We will merge it for sure (modified or not), because we’re interested in having this feature” Evgeny says. For Konstantinos, it was his first GSoC. “I would sure like to participate again next summer” he says. “The ability to discuss with an experienced developer and ask them questions about issues is the most interesting and beneficial part of it. It is also very pleasing to see that your work is integrated in a real life open source project.”

Konstantinos was also keen on continuing his participation in open source projects and being active in the community. This sentiment is exactly what GSoC is all about.

“The whole GSoC experience was fascinating. I never had the chance to work on such a big and interesting project collaborating with experienced people. The development went pretty smoothly after the initial period that I had to absorb a lot of new information. My mentor, Evgeny Khramtsov, helped me a lot especially with all the technical issues that appeared throughout the process.”

When I asked Evgeny, he was happy with the experience as well, saying “This is my first GSoC project. The student asked the questions, I answered them :)”

Here at ProcessOne we believe open source software and open development communities benefit everyone. We will continue to support BEAM Community and Google Summer of Code, and keep ejabberd community strong.